10 Books Every Leader Must Read
I'm going to give you the top 10 books that every leader needs to read.
Hey, everyone, and welcome to my YouTube channel. I'm Doug Howard, and I'm a leadership mentor and coach. Throughout my career, the best books I've read on leadership all came from recommendations from other people, which is why I want to use this episode to pay it forward by sharing my best leadership book recommendations with you.
Now, each book I put on this list was selected for a very specific reason and I'm going to explain those reasons along the way. But I don't want to waste any time, so let's dive in.
1 - How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
The first book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Now, I know this book might seem obvious, but I just want to point something out here.
Everyone I talk to always tells me yeah, I know I need to read that book, but I've never read it. It's just amazing to me how many people know they should read it, but they don't. So I'm here to tell you that if you haven't read this book, take the time to read it because despite the fact that it was written, 80 years ago or whatever, this book is a timeless classic that, is like the I Ching of leadership.
It provides valuable insights on how to build meaningful relationships and how to be more effective in your communication. The book is essentially a guide to improving your interpersonal skills and becoming more influential and becoming more likable. A lot of the main points in this book are related to how to handle conflicts and how to handle criticism diplomatically.
The book actually provides tactical strategies for dealing with conflicts and criticism in a way that doesn't offend other people or doesn't alienate other people. Everything in this book is all building towards how do you win other people to your way of thinking, in other words, influence. This book actually provides clear techniques on that too, for persuading other people and for getting them to see things from your perspective through finding common ground and presenting your ideas in a compelling way.
It gives very interesting stories and anecdotes, a lot of them are dated, the book was written in the 1930s. It talks about references like snail mail, when you're using influence techniques and tactics, but all these things can be applied today. It has a lot of great stories from famous historical people and great leaders from history like Abraham Lincoln and the tactics they used in leading and motivating people. It's a very fascinating book because a lot of the stuff in there is just timeless. Everything in there is just all about leading, inspiring, and motivating other people.
But the reason it's number one on my list is because when it comes to anything related to leadership training, this book is the OG. Tony Robbins, John Maxwell, Marshall Goldsmith, any of these leadership gurus out there today, pretty much every voice in leadership bases their concepts and their pillars and their philosophies all around the stuff that's taught in this book.
I look at this book as the one on one course that you need to take before you go to an advanced levels, because everything out there today is built on these core principles.
BONUS SUGGESTION
The second book on the list is Twilight New Moon by Stephanie Meyer. This book explores themes of love, loss, and the complexities of identity and relationships within the context of paranormal romance.
Okay. I'm just kidding. Breaking Dawn was way better.
2 - Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
The real number two on this list is Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. This is actually the only Simon Sinek book that I included in this list, but honestly, I highly recommend reading all of his books because each one will expand your perspective on people and leadership. The reason I chose Leaders Eat Last for this list is because it's the only book I've found that quantifies leadership in a scientific way.
The book title was inspired by the concept of servant leadership. In the book, Sinek argues that the most effective leaders prioritize the well being and the success of their teams above their own self interests. He gives the example of military leaders who would ensure that their soldiers ate before they did. He would explain how this demonstrates a selfless commitment to their troops' welfare.
But what makes this book most interesting is how he explains the biological and physiological foundations of leadership. He explains how humans have evolved to thrive in groups where trust and cooperation are essential to survival. He talks about the chemical reactions in our brain that happen when we feel trust and when we feel like we belong.
It's all based on our evolutionary DNA and how we are evolved to be in communities where we feel safe and where we feel like we're taking care of, and where we have leaders that are taking care of us. Now in the modern world this translates to effective leaders creating an environment where each person on your team feels safe, valued, and they feel inspired to contribute their best efforts.
Some of the key points from this book are the importance of trust for increasing loyalty and commitment. It also talks a lot about the role of leadership and what role that plays in reducing stress for your team. With the main idea being that when your employees feel secure and supported, they're going to be better equipped to handle stress and better equipped to handle challenges and adapt to uncertainty in the workplace.
The book also talks a lot about the power of having a sense of belonging, and it highlights the significance of creating a culture where your team feels like they belong. Because when people feel connected to their colleagues, and when they feel connected to you as the leader, and when they feel connected to the organization's mission, they're more likely to work together harmoniously.
Now, throughout the book, Sinek shares inspiring stories of leaders from various industries who have successfully implemented the principles of this book in their companies. But what's really cool is at the end, he provides practical advice on how you can apply these things and develop these leadership qualities and foster a culture of trust and cooperation at your company.
3- Radical Candor by Kim Scott
Number three is Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Honestly, this is the best book there is on how to give constructive feedback. The entire book is basically about that. It's a reference manual that provides practical frameworks and strategies for delivering effective communication as a leader.
The author, Kim Scott, worked in big tech companies throughout her career, youTube, Google, Apple, Dropbox, Twitter. Throughout the book, she shares fascinating stories and examples from her experiences working alongside infamous leaders like Larry Page, Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, Sheryl Sandberg, like it's a name dropping throughout the book, but it's really interesting to hear how she applied these techniques on these leaders.
She also talks about lessons she learned from these leaders and how they implemented different versions of this, which kind of helped her create this concept of radical candor. The entire book revolves around this concept of radical candor, which essentially means striking a balance between caring personally for your team and challenging them directly to reach their full potential.
In other words, being nice, but not being passive. She basically outlines a spectrum of leadership styles, ranging from obnoxious aggression, and that would be where you're, too challenging for your team, but you're not caring enough. Then on the other end of that spectrum would be ruinous empathy, where you care too much, but you're not challenging your team. She also explains how radical candor lies in the sweet spot, directly in the middle of that spectrum.
Now, every leader needs to read this book because it starts off by highlighting common leadership pitfalls like micromanagement and avoiding difficult conversations. It also teaches you how to avoid these traps and lead more effectively.
She actually tells a really compelling story in here where before she was applying this technique in her career, radical candor, she had an experience as a manager where she had a underperforming direct report and they basically just weren't pulling their own weight. They weren't even doing the most remedial of tasks correctly. But instead of handling it directly, she was on the ruinous empathy side of leadership where she was just basically didn't have the heart to hurt this person's feelings and tell them that they weren't doing a good job. So how she handled it was, she did all the work for him.
She didn't tell him he was doing a bad job. She didn't tell him he was doing things wrong. So she swept all the dirt under the rug, I guess you could say, for over a year. This person had no idea they were doing a bad job. But then the time came where the company had to make budget cuts and he was getting let go because of his performance. He was caught completely off guard by this.
He basically said in his exit interview, How could you do this to me? I didn't know anything was going wrong. How could you not give me a chance to improve? She basically explains how this was her wake up call that realized like she wasn't being a good leader by avoiding these problems.
There's a lot of great stories in this book that just change your mindset on how you approach difficult conversations. But the meat and potatoes of this book gives you tactical strategies for having candid conversations with your team while teaching you how to give feedback that is, again, both caring and direct, which ultimately helps you improve your communication skills so that you can build stronger relationships with your team. But what I love the most about this book is that it provides a clear and actionable framework for building strong, productive, and trusting relationships with every person on your team.
4 - Atomic Habits by James Clear
The fourth book on this list is Atomic Habits by James Clear. Now, if you haven't read this book yet, start reading it today because this book literally impacts every area of your life.
The core idea is that small incremental improvements in your habits, which he refers to as atomic habits, he basically explains how these lead and add up to significant and lasting personal and professional growth.
The idea is, the correlation to how millions and billions of atoms combined together to equal, physical objects. Atomic habits that, are seemingly small, make major differences in your life.
One of the most fascinating concepts from this book is that everything you do is a habit. It's simply a matter of whether it's a good habit or a bad habit. He explains this idea of the habit loop. The idea is that there's four stages of a habit. The first is cue, then craving, response, and reward. Now this four step process is how all habits are made, followed, and broken.
So just for a dumb, simple example, eating cookies when they're out on display in the kitchen or in your company break room. The cue would be that you notice cookies on a plate. The craving would be that you taste a cookie. The response would be you grab the cookie and put it in your mouth and the reward would be that the cookie tastes good when you eat it.
Now, this seems pretty obvious, but what's really cool about the book is that the author explains how to manipulate this process to trick your brain into breaking bad habits and how to form new positive habits. He explains how this is how every habit forms. If you can trace the cue, craving, response, reward for your habit. Then you can make or break any good or bad habit in your life.
Now, obviously this book comes with tons of benefits and it's a great resource for personal growth, behavior change, and increasing your productivity and a lot of things, but here's why leaders need to read this book. All the concepts in this book can be applied to team dynamics. What I mean by that is, when you understand how habits shape behavior. You can literally teach your team how to break bad habits and how to form positive habits, which can help you foster a high performing environment on your team.
5 - Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt
Number five on the list is Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt. This book is really unique and a lot of people haven't heard of it because a lot of people haven't heard of the person that this book is about.
What this book does is it really emphasizes the importance of people centric leadership. It does this through celebrating the life and the principles of legendary Silicon Valley executive coach, Bill Campbell. Now, if you haven't heard of Bill Campbell, he had a very unique leadership philosophy and it all revolved around love, discipline, and results. He believed in caring deeply for people. But he also believed in offering tough but fair feedback. He was a college football coach before he got into executive coaching and everything he did was revolved around helping individuals and teams basically reach their full potential and achieve outstanding results.
What makes this book really cool is that it shares a lot of anecdotes and case studies, basically telling how Bill's coaching transformed companies like Google and Apple in the early stages of their company. It also explores the profound influence that he had on these major tech leaders like Steve Jobs and Larry Page and the book's author, Eric Schmidt.
Now, the reason I recommend this book for you as a leader is because it gives you a lot of insights on how to effectively coach and mentor your team. It also teaches you how to create a positive work environment for your team, too. It has a lot of different takes on what really goes into coaching and mentoring, and I found this book really insightful.
6 - Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
Number six is Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. Now, like every book by Malcolm Gladwell, this one is extremely thought provoking and it explores the challenges and the complexities of human interactions with people that we don't know very well, in other words, strangers.
The book is filled with intriguing stories and case studies that examine why we frequently misunderstand other people, why we misjudge their intentions, and why we make errors in judgment when it comes to strangers. Now, the author Gladwell, he also dives into the psychology of communication, trust, and deception. He sheds light on factors that contribute to misunderstandings and what actually is happening when you misread a situation.
One of the most intriguing parts of this book is the concept of defaulting to truth. What that means is we, as humans, naturally tend to believe what other people say. We also assume that other people are generally being truthful and honest. Now this concept challenged me to reconsider my assumptions about human interaction and trust, particularly when dealing with people I don't know well. It highlights the importance of being aware of our natural biases and the potential risks of assuming that everyone we meet is honest and straightforward.
Here's why this book is a must read for leaders. There's two reasons. The first one is related to crisis management. Leaders often deal with challenging situations and with people you're unfamiliar with, new employees, you got to get to know them and build trust. This book provides insights into how misunderstandings with these situations can quickly escalate in these situations. It also provides strategies for how you can have better communication and judgment when these things happen.
Second is related to cultural awareness. If you're a leader who works in a diverse environment, this book will help you gain a deeper understanding of how cultural factors actually influence your interactions and your decision making.
7 - Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
Number seven on the list is called Drive The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and it's by Daniel Pink. This book completely changed my way of thinking and it addresses one of the most common challenges that leaders have, especially when managing the younger generation, and that's figuring out how to motivate your team.
What I really like about this book is that it challenges traditional notions of what motivates people personally and professionally. The book also debunks many commonly held beliefs about motivation, such as the use of external rewards like bonuses or punishments to motivate people. He basically explains how these methods are way less effective than intrinsic motivators and getting people to be motivated from within.
Daniel Pink, identifies three key elements of intrinsic motivation. The first one is autonomy, which is the ability to make choices, set goals, and direct your own actions. He points out how people have a natural desire to have control over their own lives and their own work. He argues that when you give individuals more control over their work, it leads to increased motivation and performance.
The second principle is the pursuit of mastery, or the desire to become better at something. Pink explains that people are driven by the opportunity to develop their skills and expertise, leading to a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.
Now, the third principle is having a sense of purpose, which means understanding the impact that your work has on a larger scale and how this is a strong motivator for people. Pink discusses how individuals are motivated when they see a meaningful connection between their efforts and a greater purpose or societal benefit from their actions. This book provides you with a blueprint for leveraging these three elements of intrinsic motivation to unlock higher levels of performance, satisfaction, and innovation in your team and in anyone.
A quick sidebar before I continue with the list. If you're interested in learning more about motivation, and if you're going to read that book, you should also check out my episode called how I Motivated a Struggling Direct Report to Improve Their Performance in One Conversation. I'll include a link to that episode in the description.
8 - THE 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell
Number eight is 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. This is one of the very first books I read on leadership, and if you're relatively new to leadership, this book is a great place to start because it provides you with a solid foundation of principles and concepts that are essential for effective leadership.
A lot of people consider John Maxwell to be the number one leading expert on leadership because he's been releasing best selling books for over 40 years on leadership. What makes this book so powerful is that it captures decades of his experience and research, and it boils it all down into 21 laws that are universally applicable at all levels of leadership, whether you're an entry level manager or a CEO.
You can also apply these things in any situation or environment. To give you an example of how the book works, he has these laws, 21 irrefutable laws, and a few examples of them are the law of the lid. Now, each chapter in the book goes really deep into these laws, but just to give you a high level example. The law of the lid is, basically means that no matter what field you work in, your overall effectiveness is capped by your leadership ability. What he means by that is, your success is basically capped by your ability to lead people and influence people and motivate people. For you to become more effective at anything, you need to actively work on improving your leadership skills.
Another law is the Law of Navigation, which means that leaders must have a vision for the future, and they must be forward thinking. When you have that forward thinking vision. You also have to chart a clear course and provide direction to your team and your organization to achieve their goals. So it takes all these laws and breaks them down with strategies for how to actually build these skills and how to apply them in your workplace.
But the reason I'm including this book on here is actually a bonus tip. If you are in a leadership level where you manage other managers, or if you're trying to build leaders on your team. You should definitely read this book together with your team, almost like a book club.
Cover one of the laws per week, which is basically reading a chapter a week. Each week you can meet with them for 30 to 45 minutes, have a roundtable discussion where everyone shares their biggest takeaways from that law, and you can also talk about what you learned from each law and how you're gonna put them into action as a team.
I'm sharing this tip because this is what I did back when I was a manager. This is one of the first books I read on leadership, like I said. Then when I read it, I thought, what a great place to start for other leaders and nurturing other leaders to grow. I just think book clubs are a great way for you to organically build a leadership culture within your team because you're all experiencing the same thing together. It gives you a, basically a common hub to, share what you're learning and actually hold each other accountable to putting into action.
9 - What Got You Here, Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
Number nine is What Got You Here, Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. Now the title probably explains a lot about what this book is, but the book basically explores the critical skills and behaviors that leaders need to excel in a rapidly changing business world.
The author, Marshall Goldsmith, he focuses around the concept that the very behaviors and habits that led you to be successful in the past might actually be holding you back from advancing to the next level in the future.
The idea being, for example, if you excelled as an individual contributor because you were great at doing hands on work and you were doing things that nobody else was capable of, this might be what got you promoted into a leadership position. But if you maintain that hands on mindset when you're in a leadership position, you'll never grow the people on your team. You'll never scale up in your role and you'll never advance to the next level of your career. In essence, what got you to this position won't get you to the next position.
Now the book actually helps you overcome this trap by identifying a range of common leadership pitfalls and behaviors that can actually hinder your personal and professional growth, such as the tendency to not listen, the tendency to speak too much, or the tendency to undermine other people's ideas.
Some of the main themes in this book are identifying the key behaviors that make you more likely to advance in your career, as well as the behaviors that hinder your career advancement. Other key ideas are the importance of adapting to change and embracing new approaches because again, today's business world is changing faster than ever and technology is face changing faster than ever.
We also have a whole new generation entering the workforce and they need to be led a different way then what we're used to being led or how we're used to being led. One of the other main key points in this book is dedicating time to actually engage in self reflection so that you can recognize the behaviors that might be limiting your success.
10 - Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman
The last book on this list is Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman. You can't lead other people unless you know how to lead yourself, which is why this book is a must read. It explores the importance of emotional intelligence in personal and professional success.
Now the author Goldman, he argues that while traditional measures of intelligence or IQ are essential, he argues that emotional intelligence or EQ, it plays an equally critical role, if not a more important role in determining how people navigate their lives, their relationships, and their leadership roles.
What I appreciated the most about this book is that it clarifies what EQ really is. At a top level EQ means the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions, to manage your emotions effectively, and to empathize with other people and to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships. But what's great is the book goes way deeper into each of those areas. The author also presents compelling research and real life examples to illustrate how EQ influences every aspect of your life from career success and leadership effectiveness to your own personal wellbeing and your mental health.
The way I look at it, we don't really think about well being and mental health and leadership, but I think they're intertwined, because if you're not healthy and if you're not taking care of yourself, how are you gonna take care of other people? The analogy I like to give is, you need to put your own oxygen mask on before you can help other people put their oxygen mask on.
The reason this book is so valuable to leaders is that it tackles emotional intelligence from many different angles. It also shows you how to apply this awareness towards enhancing your leadership skills, better decision making and building better relationships, resolving conflicts and creating a positive work environment for your team. If you read only one book from this list, read this one because it's one of the best investments you can make in your personal health and your professional growth.
Now as a leader, you should always be learning, growing, and reading. I'm always looking for new book recommendations on anything related to leadership and personal development. If you have any good book recommendations, please let me know in the comments.
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